I happened to be looking through the Leisure section of our local newspaper on Wednesday which features recipes, and occasionally I'll discover one that appeals to me. This was a recipe for peanut butter cookies and it was different in that among the ingredients listed was ground roasted peanuts. I didn't keep the recipe, but I did retain the idea of grinding up peanuts, and yesterday I took out the old coffee grinder that I use exclusively for grinding flax seeds. I thought that, while I was about it, I'd grind up a half-cup of flax seeds, along with a cup of peanuts and think up my own recipe.

And I did just that. I used a half-cup of Becel margarine, a half-cup of chunky peanut butter, a half-cup each of dark brown and granulated sugar, a jumbo-sized egg, a tsp.vanilla and beat it together, then began adding a cup of unbleached white flour, dash of salt, 2 tsp.baking powder, and last of all the ground peanut and flax I'd mixed together. What resulted was a fairly firm dough, firm enough so I could form nice round balls to place on cookie sheets. Then I cut pitted dates in half and stuck a half-date atop each of the cookie balls, and baked them for 28 minutes in a 350F oven.

They're about the best cookies I've ever made. Not sweet, full of flavour, texturally light, both crisp and soft and with that indefinable 'healthy' taste that lingers with food containing nutritionally good whole ingredients.

I was preparing to make oven-baked sole fillets for dinner, along with 'potato chips' done on a greased cookie sheet in a hot oven, and the obligatory but fresh and fully-appreciated vegetable salad, with strawberries and apricots for dessert, so a cookie (or two or three) afterward seemed just about right.

Soon as the cookies were removed from the oven we prepared for our afternoon walk in the ravine with patient little Jackie and Jillie. The night-time lows continue to be anywhere from -14C to -20C, with the day-time highs running around -10C to -6C, so they continue to need those little rubber booties to ensure their feet don't freeze and they can run about carefree, enjoying their sprints through the snow-and-ice-packed forest trails.

We had yet another sunny day yesterday, which doesn't quite make up in comfort for the wind that makes the cold temperature feel much more extreme, but does add to the beauty of the surrounding landscape. This wasn't a day when we saw very many other people and dogs out and about in the forest. Whenever we reach high spots in the ravine where Jackie and Jillie can look down below at the trails and bridges spanning the creek, they're on the lookout for other dogs. None to be seen yesterday, however.